France's Macron admits system of torture during Algeria war

PARIS (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday formally recognized the responsibility of the French state in the death of a dissident mathematician in Algeria in 1957, admitting for the first time the French military's "system" that included torture during Algeria's independence war.

Macron visited on Thursday the 87-year-old widow of Maurice Audin, a French anti-colonial activist who disappeared from his Algiers home after his arrest. He asked for her pardon, announced the opening of French archives on the disappeared and expressed hope a new era would dawn for often-bitter French-Algerian relations.

Audin, a French communist mathematician, was arrested in 1957 by the French military during the battle of Algiers. His body has never been recovered, but historians widely believe he was tortured — which Macron acknowledged, a major break with France's official version of the war.

"The only thing I am doing is to acknowledge the truth," Macron told Josette Audin.